Sugar Water
by Kidalana
Summary: Derek tries his hand at the stove.


**Into madness...** Yeah; um... no real explanation other than I _really_ wanted to write a Trauma Center fanfiction... and while I have a million ideas bouncing around in my head and trying to smother my brain, pushing any and all important things that I need to remember out of my head. And I wrote this while listening to music.

* * *

Any organization tends to have various events through out the year that are centered around the various holidays. Maybe an Easter egg hunt for the employee's children, or a little picnic set up on the Fourth of July. However; each organization has it's one main party. Often it was focused around Christmas, with some poor unfortunate employee dressed as Santa if there were to be children involved in the party. Caduceus was no exception to this tradition, and while it was by no means a normal hospital, they had a Christmas party, and the various staff members would show up for a little celebration some time before the actual event. So in truth the name was some sort of deception. Though no poor sop had to dress as the famous Santa Claus due to the fact that among the entire staff very few had children, at this point in time. In fact there were only four children that showed up with their parents and three of them were siblings.

While Leslie typically organized obtaining food and setting up decorations everyone was encouraged to bring some sort of dish to "give it a more personal touch". The dark haired nurse provided most of the food but she was no amazing cook and employed the help of everyone else. For the past couple years Derek had obtained amazing pies from the local store's bakery and Tyler had just brought some sort of strange food he found in a specialty store. In fact barely anyone home cooked anything for the party, with the strange exception being Victor. There was a working theory as to why he always home cooked something but no one really wanted to ask him to confirm any suspicions.

During one lunch, a week before the party, Leslie had proposed a challenge of sorts to try and see if more people could cook. She'd pointed her plastic fork directly at Derek when she suggested that someone make something. Angie promised to make some sort of main course thats name quickly escaped each doctor's respective mind. The two nurses thought whatever that was was fantastic and the dark haired woman shared with the blonde what she was planning and obtained opinions as well. Tyler simply agreed with Leslie, nodding his head and stating just as much. But in the end he would probably never touch the stove in his house to make anything, he often joked that he could make a better flan than any of them and none of them took him seriously. Come the day of the party the blond would show up with store bought food in his arms. And would could blame him? When would he have time to cook? However Derek decided to give home cooking a try, after digging though his kitchen he found a misplaced cookbook and choose one recipe.

It'd come out fine, he had reassured himself; he'd watched his mother cook when he was younger.

The sun had long since set on the city and one man named Derek was at the stove; a steamer on a back burner, another on a front burner, a bowl on the counter and a sauce pan at his elbow. In the dead of night he was measuring out sugar and water, getting ready to put them in the pan. A cookbook was open on the counter and it showed signs of having eggs broken over its surface. While the brown haired man in charge of the kitchen was by trade a surgeon he was playing the part of cook, trying to create a fabulous desert for an upcoming event. And by the look of frustration on his face things weren't going to well. Through glasses he obtained the time from the microwave and realized that Angie would arrive soon to pick him up for their night shift. Realizing that he should be sleeping instead of making a mess he made sure to think of why he was doing this.

He placed the pre-measured sugar and water into the sauce pan and onto the burner, after getting a whisk from a nearby drawer he stirred the mixture, waiting for it to turn the promised brown color. Watching it intently he was insanely excited when it started nearing the color, in his mind he shouted, almost there, and was ready to pat himself on the back for a job well done and then the water was gone. One minute he'd been at the finish line and now some sort of very dry mess was on the pan. Derek realized that was not how it was supposed to turn out, with a frown he decided to just pour some more water in and he was back at square one.

In the kitchen the heat was rising from a burner set on high; though the surgeon still stood there, whisking the mixture and watching as it went from almost done to dry mess, when it went dry he added more water. Over time the cool temperature of the kitchen made way to a summer heat, in the middle of winter. For a good twenty minutes he stood there, angry at the procedure that had been outlined to him. It had made it seem so easy, this should have been done by now. He remained determined to see this through to the end but was unfortunately interrupted by a knocking on his door, he turned to walk off to open the door and then looked down at his hands, a whisk in one hand and a pan in the other.

Instead the brown haired man turned his head and shouted over his shoulder; "Come in, the door's unlocked." No doubt the person at the door would hesitate but eventually open the door. In his mind he knew she'd also stand awkwardly in the hallway and look around, it would take her a while to actually get into the kitchen, if she ever did. He heard the door click open and then a moment later closed again. With a frown he decided to give up on the caramel and move on with his life. After putting out a hot pad he left the pan and whisk in favor of changing into new clothes. Before entering his bedroom he shouted his intentions and suggested that his visitor have a seat.

Changing was quick and in his mind he started to formulate an apology for having Angie have to pick him up, even though it wasn't his fault that his car had broken down and needed to be maintenance. But he knew that pushing blame around in front of the blonde wouldn't work. With new clothing on his back, and the idea to promise to treat her to lunch in his head, he left his room to go to the living room. However he diverted to the kitchen when he heard the blonde nurse in a room he didn't expect her.

"Doctor Stiles, what are you doing in here?" he heard this sentence once he walked into the kitchen. He raised his hand behind his head in a nervous gesture and was silent for a while. "It looks like you were trying to make caramel to go with..." she looked around and then into the bowl on the counter that contained a less that pleasant looking mixutre, "...flan?" A frown crossed the blonde's face and she looked up the the embarrassed surgeon.

"Actually, yeah," he paused and pointed at the cookbook, "I followed the instructions and all of that still happened."

The blonde looked at the offending article of literature and recoiled, realizing where he'd gone wrong, "Doctor! You don't mix it!" Angie looked over at him, with the idea that that was a basic that anyone would know, "You just leave it to boil, where'd you get the idea to mix it?"

Derek laughed, "You don't mix it, you say?"

* * *

It lacks energy and sucks on many levels, yes? Parts of it can get explanations, I'm playing with my writing style currently.


End file.
